Footnotes: Tame Impala

Footnotes is the section in our magazine where we take a deeper look at the music surrounding our feature artists. Read Sam Hockley-Smith's cover story on Tame Impala and the rock scene in Perth from FADER #82 here, and check out three related songs below.

Canyons, “When I See You Again” Keep Your Dreams (Modular 2012)To fly to Perth, I had to get on a plane from New York to Los Angeles, then I had to drink three whiskeys at an airport bar with an island theme, fly from LA to Sydney, then fly from Sydney to Perth. It took almost 30 hours. Four days later, I did it again. Beyond delirious, eyes glazing over the in-flight menu (what up goopy pasta!), Canyons’ “When I See You Again” came on over the plane’s speakers. The song fully embraces cheesiness in a way that you can’t really be mad at. It’s huge and life-affirming and could probably soundtrack a commercial about people connecting through the magic of smartphones. But it hasn’t got there yet, so now it feels like a perfect pop secret: emotional and honest and not the least bit cynical. SHS

Tame Impala, “That’s All For Everyone” (Fleetwood Mac Cover) Just Tell Me That You Want Me (Hear Music/Concord 2012)The Fleetwood Mac tribute compilation Just Tell Me That You Want Me will serve as a sort of bizzaro time capsule of indie music circa 2012, its form capturing the cover-obsessed zeitgeist of years past but its content skewing soundly towards the in-demand acts of the present. Luckily, Fleetwood Mac is one of those forever bands that offers something for everyone. Case in point, “That’s All For Everyone,” the psychedelic, interstitial track on Tusk, an album that saw the band and its architect Lindsey Buckingham at a creative zenith. Buckingham knew you couldn’t follow up a heartrending ballad like “Storms” without a little inchoate exorcism, releasing the demons before getting back to the jams, which is pretty much what Tame Impala does in every song, cover or otherwise. AB

Pond, “You Broke My Cool” Beard, Wives, Denim (Modular 2012)The zero-budget video for Pond’s expertly sloppy “You Broke My Cool” features a lot of shots of the sun, always with a terrifying purple crater refracting in its middle, burning an unfixable hole in the sensor of whatever iPod Nano the band wrangled to film themselves horsing around the scorched countryside of Perth. In the clip they play frisbee shirtless and look at cows and stuff, but it’s just filler around the purple dot, really, that vicious and unshakeable reminder that, in the cross-eyes of something bigger than Earth, everything’s fucked. DC